Smartphone penetration in Canada (Rogers' territory) was at 55% in 2014, and increased to 68% in 2015. That's still substantial growth, and indicates that we're still a few years away from market saturation. As such, it would be several years before we'd see the effects you forecast, which doesn't leave much time for meaningful reductions in data prices in the next five years.

It's not possible for a single phone to support every possible LTE band simultaneously (read: no such cellular radio exists). As such, manufacturers have to pick the most common bands in a given region. It's not due to lack of standardization.

In 2008, Rogers introduced a 6GB data plan for $30 as part of the launch of the iPhone 3G.

7 years later, the equivalent 6GB plan costs roughly $10-15 more.

Considering that cellular bandwidth caps have effectively shrunk over the past 7 years, despite speeds increasing by 40x, please explain why I should expect caps to be dramatically higher 5 years from today?

Bullshit. Not only do they support external monitors, they actively advertise support for external monitors. They list the specs of what external monitors their new 13" MacBook supports right on their site (which is pretty much every monitor on the market).

There is nothing stopping you from plugging in an external display to any Apple laptop, past or present. The 13" MacBook that you appear to be alluding to supports 4K external monitors.

DVI-D can carry HDMI with audio, so... no.

Anything that takes power by USB, even a Raspberry Pi.

From a more practical standpoint, handheld game consoles. I regularly power my 3DS XL from a USB battery pack (you can buy USB to 3DS cables), and I believe the Vita uses USB natively.

OP could have worded it more clearly, but was correct in that USB 3.0 cables do not work on USB 2.0 phones. They are not backwards compatible. You're using a USB 3.0 cable with a USB 3.0 phone.

You said "plugged in to a USB 2.0 slot charging my phone", and since there aren't any phones with full-sized USB ports, that means the phone's USB 2.0 slot must be micro, and a USB 3.0 micro cable can't be used on a phone with a USB 2.0 micro port.

So your phone has a micro USB 3 connector on it, not a USB 2.0 port as your original post stated.

This doesn't change the fact that a micro USB 3 cable will not fit into a micro USB 2 port.

There are not any phones on the market that have full-sized USB sockets, so a "USB 3.0 cable" that connects to a phone must be using a micro connector (there is no mini variant of USB 3).

It's possible that the only reason that Lightning made it into phones was because they wanted to get rid of the 30-pin connector, but USB-C was still a few years away. Or that USB-C was too big, since USB-C sockets are a bunch thicker than Lightning sockets and when Lightning was introduced, Apple probably had a decent idea how thick their upcoming iPhone and iPad products were going to be.

No, you don't. Micro USB 3 connectors are stupid wide (we're talking as wide as a full-sized USB connector), and are not compatible with micro USB 2 ports.

The reverse is sort of true (you can plug a micro 2 cable into a micro 3 port), but since the ports are such different sizes, many consumers probably wouldn't figure that out.

Assuming you're coming from Europe, you're going to have other issues, since there's more than just a voltage difference. There's also a frequency difference, with Europe using 50Hz and North America using 60Hz. Things like a kettle probably don't care, though.

North American homes use a split-phase system which means they have both 120v and 240v. Typically high-power appliances use the 240v, such as dryers, large air conditioners, ovens, etc.